Photographs by Frank Hurley

Frank Hurley was the photographer on the Shackleton expedition to the South Pole and then went on to accompany Anzac 3 Div at the Battle of Messines, where he took some remarkable photographs of the battlefield.

Hurley felt that his pictures did not capture the full horror of the things he had seen so manipulated images, creating composites of scenes. Some thought this was clearly wrong but others feel it was an appropriate artistic response to the war.

An new exhibition at Charleston Farm outside Lewes in Sussex addresses this issue and displays a number of his images.

http://www.charleston.org.uk/visit/gallery.html

Charleston has its own Great War heritage of a kind in that the Bloomsbury Set holed up there to avoid zeppelin attacks and to be pacifists. Meanwhile the nearby Firle Place was used as a hospital for Australian troops.

You can see Hurley pictures on the AWM website:

http://www.awm.gov.au/captured/official/hurley.asp

You can also find examples elsewhere on this blog where they are accompanied by photos of the archaeology, landscape and team inspired by Hurley's work and taken by Ian, our own photographer, who was using a plate camera, just like Hurley's own.

Ian's Images

Those of you on site in 2007 will remember the presence of Ian R. Cartwright, photographer with the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford. Ian brought his box camera with him and took plate photographs on site in much the same way as Frank Hurley did in following the Australian 3rd Division. His stunning results are presented below. We have also included the original Hurley image of the Australian 3rd Div artillery limber (Richard's grandfather's old mob!) to illustrate the motivation for Ian's studies. The images speak for themselves and we hope to be able to announce their exhibition alongside some of the Messines finds at some point.

'Spoils of Archaeology': detritus of war emerging from the excavated trenches

'Front Line dirt': part of the (enormous) spoil heap from the bunker trench

'Life in no-man's land': Mr Delrue's crop emerges in no-man's land.

Entitled 'Anzacs' - Michael in the Australian Lewis Gun sap


Entitled 'Fallen Remembered' - Tori and Ralph laying the wreath at the Ploegsteert Memorial


Entitled 'Sap Team' Danny and his team (with Martin and Richard) at the Lewis sap


'Generations': Tori and Kirsty by the German bunker with the church of Messines in the distance


'Peace Dig' - Jo and Becki looking on as the Australian recut of the German front line is dug


'Messines Ridge' taken from no-man's land


'Shell burst' - Tangled iron work from Jon's excavation of the shell crater


Archaeological Limber - Ian's take on the famous Hurley photo of the gun team (below)